


have a care for the path

by stormwarnings



Series: tolkien gen week 2020 [4]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Day Four, Gen, Solo, Sort Of, Tolkien Gen Week, hints of irish myths? the whole fae folk thing, i dont know what the fuck this is, im ngl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25176157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormwarnings/pseuds/stormwarnings
Summary: Legolas can't help but twine himself into the great symphony of Fangorn - but as his mother taught him, it is easy to get lost in something so powerful.
Relationships: Gimli (Son of Glóin) & Legolas Greenleaf
Series: tolkien gen week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820518
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27
Collections: Tolkien Gen Week 2020





	have a care for the path

**Author's Note:**

> a kinda late day four of [tolkien gen week](https://tolkiengenweek.tumblr.com/) based off a hc (that is not mine) and the fact that i go nuts for fae lore. anyway, this is pretty rough but hope its enjoyed :)

Legolas stood now in Fangorn once more, upon the banks of a small river. Gimli he could hear, far off in the distance, gathering firewood and hesitantly greeting the trees. Legolas understood his hesitance – even with the defeat of Isengard and the vanquishing of Sauron, the forest still felt strange and alien.

That strangeness was the reason that Legolas stood now, on the banks of the river, in naught but his underclothes. His boots and bow he left on the bank, his clothes back by the ring of stones Gimli had set for a small cookfire. He waded into the water, slow-moving and cold as ice. It was shaded by the trees, and as he stepped in up to his waist, it only served again to highlight the unfamiliarity of this forest.

Legolas breathed out, letting his body accustom itself to the temperature. Then he tilted his head back, looking up at the canopy, and opened himself to the silence.

It was taught to him by his mother, long ago. For he had his father’s hair, golden and Sindarin, but his oaken skin and birdlike eyes came directly from his Silvan mother, the Elvenqueen under the trees.

The Silvan elves were unlike the elves who travelled to Valinor, and Legolas yet had the heritage of both. The Silvan accepted him as their own, for his mother had been a lady of theirs in her own right. His father the Elvenprince adored her, fell in love with her beauty and her magic and the strangeness that she had carried, and perhaps that was why the Silvan folk had allowed him as their king. He did not seek to change their magic to fit the black and white of the Eldar; instead, he sought to listen, and to learn, and to protect. And his son, then, Legolas, had a foot in both worlds – in the water that the Elvenking influenced, in the wood that the Elvenqueen knew.

(But not all saw it as such. It was not for many years, until Legolas journeyed to Rivendell and found that the younger elves there feared him, that he realized. “ _They think you are dangerous_ ,” Elrond Peredhil had told him. “ _Because you are different. Do not let them lord over you. You are different, and that makes you strong. You have a right to this land as much as they. Perhaps truly, you have more._ ”)

His mother had taught him many things. She had taught him of the courts that held sway in the forest – the court of the Silvans, and the court of the Hunt. The Hunt, once followers of Oromë, who were now foreign and queer to even the Silvan, who were no longer quite elves themselves but something much more predatorial.

And the third court, the court of shadows, a distant relative of the Silvan folk, but crueler and harsher. “ _Sometimes,_ ” had said Thranduil. “ _We will entangle mortals, for their sense of time is shorter and more fleeting than ours, and they catch and hold in our revels like flies in honey. But even the Silvan, even the Eldar, can get caught in the webs of those who once belonged in Gorgoroth. You must never go there, my son_. _They have taken too much from us already._ ”

So his mother had taught him to follow the paths straight and true, to learn the trails of deception and mist. For forests were shaped by those who inhabited them, and of the three courts of Greenwood the Great, the Silvan were the only kind ones. 

(And even then, Legolas knew, the Silvan were not kind – simply kind _er_.)

She had taught him how to listen, to open his ears and hear the skeins of tangled music beneath the silence, beneath the songs the elves could already hear. That was the quiet magic of the wood. _But you must be careful_ , had said his mother. _For it can trap you, just as you listen. Do not forget yourself. And do not, ever, give them your name._

Here, in this forest, he could not resist the chance to listen to Fangorn, without fear of orcs or hunting or wayward hobbits. It was so old, so saturated with lore and magic. He dove in, and in his excitement, left behind all that he had been taught, losing himself in the ancient symphony.

He tumbled down the twisted paths of the song, and suddenly there was something else present, and then he was falling, past hollowed trunks and misshapen roots and _break the stones and snap the bones and –_

“Ho, little one,” came a distant voice, old and strong. “It is not your time, not just yet.”

Legolas…his name was Legolas.

Oh, his father would have killed him, for what he just did.

The voice spoke again, and Legolas recognized it as the Ent, Treebeard. “Your friend has returned. He has been calling you. Come back, so that he may not worry.”

Legolas breathed out, and felt the water around him. He blinked, and moved, and his joints cracked. The sky was dark, the river swirling around his legs like eddies of shadow.

He winced. His mother would have killed him, too.

On the bank stood Treebeard, leaning out to tap Legolas. Gimli hovered behind him, anxious and angry at the same time. The fire on the bank cast odd shadows over his dwarf’s face, carving the silhouette in fire.

Treebeard, seeing he had awoken, laughed. “These woods are not for the faint of heart, child of Greenwood. Be less hasty, next time.”

Legolas nodded, a bit ashamed. He had done exactly what his parents had always told him not to, and lost he had been, barely even realizing it. “I give you my thanks,” he said to the Ent.

The Ent peered down at him. “Hm, yes. I say it would be very hasty to give me much of anything, but I will accept your thanks nonetheless. You know these rules, little wildling. Now that you have felt Fangorn, you will walk among the branches more easily. But have a care for the path you follow, and know what you freely give. Here I will leave you.”

He strode away, leaving Legolas only to be embarrassed at the rescue he had required. He dragged himself out of the water, turning the dark chorus over in his head, comparing it to Treebeard’s voice.

Then he remembered Gimli. Gimli, who was glaring at Legolas the same way he had after Legolas had brought down the oliphaunt. Gimli, who from the sound of it, had been trying to wake him for an hour or more.

Legolas opened his mouth to apologize, and Gimli held up a hand. He turned around and stomped back to the fire.

Legolas sighed. It seemed he was in for a long night.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on [tumblr](https://stormwarnings.tumblr.com/) now i am going to go read and forget this day happened


End file.
